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It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I needed to take a break from my creative work. Funny though, I found that I missed cataloging my adventures. So, here I am with my newest crafting adventure, boro stitching. Google it. The images are so yummy!

I’ve been wanting to take this class with Jody Alexander for some time, but my schedule never matched. Jody is an artist, bookbinder, librarian, and teacher who lives and works here in my home town of Santa Cruz, California. Here is her current listing of classes.

I’ve taken her book binding class and fell in love with book binding all over again. Recently, she published a book with Blurb Books, The Boro Aesthetic: Books, Bags, Zakka and Zokin. Well, I couldn’t resist and it has been AWEsome! Here are some of my pages from the book I did following her easy step by step instructions.

I’m going to try a boro bag next. Drop me a line and let me know what have you been up to this week. I’m super interested in your crafting and adventures.

I learned how to make my own font this week. I highly recommend ‘Create Your Hand Drawn Font‘ with Jenn Coyle on SkillShare. I started out by sketching my font in pencil and then filling it in with pen.

Then I scanned it into PhotoShop and cleaned up the letters.

Lastly, I imported them into Illustrator made them into vector files. I made both a lower and an upper case.

Lastly, I imported them into Glyphs, which I got for free for 30 days. Happy me.

Here is what it looks like in word.

Here is what it looks like in a drawing. Love that it matches my style of hand drawn art.

So, I’ve been looking for fun things to cheer myself up and I found two design competitions that may be of interest to fellow designers.

The first pattern contest is with TigerPrint. They were formed in 1996 with ten people that worked out of a small office in Brighouse, West Yorkshire designing cutting edge card and wrap designs. They now have over 200 employees and offices in Bradford, London and Hong Kong.

TigerPrint has a monthly brief and this month it is called Characters Everyday. The competition is all about designing characters for Tigerprint’s Everyday range. Think male, female and love. Characters could be people or animals or objects brought to life. Check out the link for the brief. The deadline for patterns is June 15.

The second set of contests is with Spoonflower. They have a weekly contest and have two great briefs called Lemonade and Llamas in June.

Lemonade – Fresh lemon juice, water, and sugar come together to make this very delicious, very thirst-quenching summer drink. Do you like it sour or sweet? Deadline for entry is Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015. Voting will open Thursday, June 25th, 2015.

Llamas – It’s time to travel to the South American Andes mountains to show your llama love! Give a go at creating a lovable llama themed design. Deadline for entry is Tuesday, June 30th, 2015. Voting will open Thursday, July 2nd, 2015.

I’ve been working on technical repeats on paper (PhotoShop is next module), patterns in PhotoShop, buisness logo, and coordinated presentation sheets. This surface pattern class called The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design with Beth Kempton and Rachel Taylor has been super fun. It’s said because this is the last week and I’ve had a lot of fun checking out the daily homework posts and having fun networking with other pattern designers. Here is some of the work I’ve been doing this week.

Below is my original line drawing of a poppy from pippin lane. I took it and repeated in PhotoShop. Loving the colors; it’s simple and clean.

The one below here has a middle eastern flair. Again I took my original line art and uploaded it into PhotoShop. I researched the trending colors for fall and decided to use them as they were rich and full, perfect for fall.

Below is a presentation sheet showing a collection of coordinated patterns. It’s my original line work and was super fun to do! Can you see this on a set of flannel sheets, curtains or pillows?

I shared last week that I’m taking a surface pattern class called The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design with Beth Kempton and Rachel Taylor. Wow, what a fun week of pattern making. I’ve been learning how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, mark making, and creating repeats. I’m seeing patterns everywhere, in everything.

Below are two pictures made with pen and ink. I’ll scan these into Photoshop and have fun with them later by adding color and doing repeats.

The next two patterns I made with this AWEsome new, FREE app on my iPhone called Adobe Ideas. I LOVE it. You can simply draw on the fly with as many layers as you want. You can also use your own photos like I did with the buttons.

And lastly, just because it’s spring and I’ve been loving the flowers.